I saw this statement today. Why do theists have to prove anything to atheists and vice versa?

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InterfaithForums.com-Where your ideas and beliefs count.

But, to be fair, as many theists make it as atheists; wanting someone to prove their a-priori assumptions, which is what beliefs are. One can no more prove the existence of the gods, than one can prove that parallel lines never meet....

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Grassaf, Eolas

I don't think it is necessary for anyone to "prove" their belief, or disbelief. If one wants to enter a debate on the subject, then the burden is simply on the one making a claim, pro or con. If, the claim has legal impact upon people not of the same view, then evidence is required. But one is free to believe whatever one wants, with or without evidence.

-TC

I think the "need" to prove one's belief (even in the none exsistence of God) is proof that speaks from not knowing. He that "knows" has no need.

Should it not be enough to "know" it (consciously) for oneself? Why try to prove someone else wrong? What could we possibly get out of it?

P.S. This applies to believers in God as well as disbelievers in God.

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May your awareness be perfection

I wonder if this was written by a theist or an atheist.?

When a person is ready to ask the question "what is my life about" then he/she will start searching for answers that lead to discovery of the self and
of God.
All we can do is to lead the horse to the water, we can't force it to drink.

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"Kabbalah does not let us live our lives in the dust, but elevates our mind to the height of knowledge." Johannes Reuchlin

I don't think its a hard and fast rule that the burden to prove anything
only lies on the one making a claim, it should be on both the one making
the claim and the one rejecting it.

When a case is filed and sent to a court for decision , both parties have
to present evidences to support there cases and the Judge then decides
by reviewing both evidences.
If for example a person A claims that person B attacked him several times then offcourse the person B will try to defend himself.

Will not the person B use resources and try to establish evidences to prove
himself innocent?

Similarly when we muslims or theists claim about the existance of God ,we also point to the facts and visual evidences that support our claims ,it is not that we blindly start claiming something.A claim remains a hypothesis unless and until it is proved as a fact with the help of explicit evidences.
Similarly the atheists have the burden on them to prove the non-existance of God .


The Qur'an itself is the biggest evidence that proves the existance of a Supreme Creator who is non but God.


Now looking from Scientific perspective,each and every aspect of our Solar System,Galaxies and Universe indicate that it could not have existed without a Supreme Power or Intelligence.


The planets that orbit around the solar system have a calculated motion and during there motion around the Sun ,they donot collide with each other and neither escape from there orbit.

This is what the Scientists say :

"The explosive vigour of the universe is thus matched with almost unbelievable accuracy to its gravitating power. The big bang was not evidently, any old bang, but an explosion of exquisitely arranged magnitude."
Paul Davies, Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature, 1984, p. 184

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“If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size.”

Stephen Hawking, A Brief History Of Time, Bantam Press, London: 1988, p. 121-125

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"…Something else has to be behind things, somehow guiding them. And that, one might say, is a kind of mathematical proof of divinity." Guy

Marchie, American Science Writer

Guy Murchie, The Seven Mysteries of Life, Boston: The Houghton Mifflin Company, 1978, p. 598
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"If the world's finest minds can unravel only with difficulty the deeper workings of nature, how could it be supposed that those workings are merely a mindless accident, a product of blind chance?"

Paul Davies, Superforce, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984, p. 235-236
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"The Earth, with its atmosphere and oceans, its complex biosphere, its crust of relatively oxidised, silica rich, sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks overlaying [a magnesium silicate mantle and core] of metallic iron, with its ice caps, deserts, forests, tundra, jungles, grasslands, fresh-water lakes, coal beds, oil deposits, volcanoes, fumaroles, factories, automobiles, plants, animals, magnetic field, ionosphere, mid-ocean ridges, convincing mantle... is a system of stunning complexity."


J. S. Lewis, American Geologist

F. Press, R. Siever, Earth, New York: W. H. Freeman, 1986, p. 2
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That the radiation from the sun (and from many sequence stars) should be concentrated into a minuscule band of the electromagnetic spectrum which provides precisely the radiation required to maintain life on earth is very remarkable."

Ian Campbell, British Physicist

Ian M. Campbell, Energy and the Atmosphere, London: Wiley, 1977, p.1-2
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"This, as most other of the Atheists' Arguments, proceeds from a deep Ignorance of Natural Philosophy; for if there were but half the sea that now is, there would also be but half the Quantity of Vapours, and consequently we could have but half as many Rivers as now there are to supply all the dry land we have at present, and half as much more; for the quantity of Vapours which are raised, as well as to the heat which raised them. The Wise Creator therefore did so prudently order it, that the seas should be large enough to supply Vapours sufficient for all the land."

John Ray, 18th century British Naturalist


John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Word of Creation, 1701; Michael Denton, Nature's Destiny, p. 73
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"There is a mind and purpose behind the universe. There are hints of that divine presence in how abstract mathematics can penetrate the universe's secrets, which suggests that a rational mind created the world. Nature is fined tuned to allow life and consciousness to emerge."

John Polkinghorne, British Physicist

"Science Finds God", Newsweek, 27 July 1998
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"In its standard form, the big bang theory assumes that all parts of the universe began expanding simultaneously. But how could all the different parts of the universe synchronize the beginning of their expansion? Who gave the command?"

Andrei Linde, "The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe", Scientific American, vol. 271, 1994, p. 48

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These are some of the evidences that proves the existance of God now it is up to the atheist community to prove these statements of the Scientists as false and replace them with evidences to prove the non-existance of God.

Exactly how would an atheist actually go about proving there is/are no deity/deities?

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

Neither have to prove anything but if they try to prove something then the burden of proof is on them.

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"I fully comprehended the power of the human mind at the exact moment I came to the realization that I'm totally insane and have no idea what I'm talking about."

No one needs to prove anything to anyone...accept to themselves...and I have all the proof I need for me for my beliefs...People need to leave others alone in their beliefs unless they are truly trying to learn about the others beliefs because maybe they are trying to grow or perhaps need confirmation or reinforcement that their own beliefs are not proven to themselves well enough. Discussion is fine but picking and tearing anothers beliefs apart is unnecesary and unkind.

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RevKathyV

http://www.myspace.com/divinelightinterfaith



www.divinelightinterfaithministry.com

Amen, to that!

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Only Love Prevails,
Don